A Time to Dance(73)

            shaping my hand into Pataaka hasta—my first hand word—

            a symbol that can show many things.

            He places my palms

            together like the two leaves of a closed door.

            Turns them gently apart to show the door opening.


Then he links one of his hands with one of mine,

            interlocking our thumbs,

            forging them into the wings of the divine eagle, Garuda.

            Our feet are still. But we’re dancing.

            Our fingers flutter.

            Our wings flap.

            Our divine eagle flies.

            Higher and higher.

            Glides.

            Soars.





THE COLOR

of

MUSIC





Outside the window of akka’s study,

            gray clouds smear the sky like ash.

            I tell Govinda, “I wish we didn’t cremate our dead.

            So I could at least have a grave to visit.

            But my pa scattered Paati’s ashes

            in the Adayar river, as she wanted.”


Govinda doesn’t give me the usual reply—

            that to hold on to someone’s mortal remains

            is to dishonor their eternal soul.

            Instead he says, “Would you like to go

            to where her ashes are, Veda?

            The river-mouth is near here.”


Govinda walks me

            to the Theosophical society—a green oasis in the city—

            along the banks of the Adayar river.

            Scattered inside the grounds,

            between acres of trees,

            are a few old Victorian villas

            and several places of worship: a church, a mosque, a synagogue, a Hindu temple.


Govinda and I stand together on the sandy shore

            of the Adayar estuary,

            where the river that bore Paati’s ashes rushes toward the sea.

            I think of a prayer Paati used to say,

            that each soul has a different path to reach God

            just as each river takes a different course to the one great ocean.


“Maybe Paati’s soul is with God and I can’t sense her presence

            because I haven’t figured out what God is,” I tell Govinda.


A light drizzle wets the earth. Raindrops

            split sunlight into bands of separate color.

            White light—one color containing myriad others—

            I understand.

            Water—one substance with many forms—I can feel.

            God—one yet infinite in form—I can’t understand.


“When I dance,” Govinda says,

            “or when I’m in a beautiful place,

            I feel I’m in the presence of something

            large and good.

            It doesn’t give me answers. But I don’t need them.